Berlin Journal;In Germany, Vietnamese Terrorize Vietnamese

By STEPHEN KINZER

Published: May 23, 1996

BERLIN, May 22—
In the concrete jungle of Marzahn, one of the toughest neighborhoods in what was once East Berlin, neighbors call the towering cement building at 3 Marchwitza Street "the death house."

A Vietnamese refugee committed suicide by jumping from a 17th-floor apartment there in 1994, and another, just 17, leaped to his death from the 18th floor last year.

Last week the house once again lived up to its horrific reputation. Shots were heard in one of the long corridors, and when the police arrived they found the bodies of six young Vietnamese men. Each had been killed with two shots in the back of the neck. The chief of the police unit assigned to track Vietnamese gangs, Detlev Schade, called the massacre "a new high point in the most brutal sort of crime."

Two days later railroad workers found the bodies of three more Vietnamese next to an embankment, bringing the number killed in Berlin since 1992 to 35. Fifteen more have been killed in other cities in eastern Germany, some beheaded with samurai-style swords.

"Not a single one of these murders has been solved," Mr. Schade said. "They reflect a level of criminality that is completely new to us. We have dead bodies and we have bullets that we have extracted from the bodies. What we don't have is witnesses, and we aren't going to find any."

The freedom of movement that people enjoy in post-cold-war Europe has turned Germany into a paradise for bands of ethnic criminals. Those made up of Russians, Romanians, Chinese and people from the former Yugoslavia are among the most successful, but those from Vietnam have emerged as the most brutal.

About half a dozen Vietnamese gangs, each with about 150 members, are believed to be active in the Berlin area. Their turf war is evidently heating up, with the 15 killings recorded so far this year already exceeding the total for all of 1995.

The core of these gangs' business is cigarette smuggling. On street corners and at subway stations throughout eastern Berlin, Vietnamese vendors hawk cartons of cigarettes at one-third less than the normal price.

So much money has been generated by this business that, the police say, Vietnamese gangs have moved into gambling, prostitution, pirating of audio and video cassettes and other criminal enterprises. Throughout eastern Berlin and the former East Germany, the gangs have also taken over many Chinese restaurants. Investigators believe they have used violence or the threat of violence to force out legitimate owners.

"Most of us put German names on our apartment doors," said a terrified Vietnamese refugee in Marzahn who asked to be identified only as Nguyen. "We are ashamed of what other Vietnamese do here."

Police investigators are handicapped by the fact that they do not have a single officer or detective of Vietnamese origin. Berlin's police union is demanding more freedom to use electronic surveillance, and is urging that Mr. Schade's 20-member investigating unit be doubled in size.

"The warning is written on every pack," said Hermann Lutz, the laconic union leader. "It says, 'Cigarettes Are Dangerous to Your Health.' "

About 60,000 Vietnamese live legally in Germany, and 40,000 others are thought to be here illegally. Most came to East Germany as contract laborers in the 1980's and have remained after the expiration of their visas.

Last year, Vietnam agreed to take back the former contract laborers in exchange for $65 million in "development assistance." Germany complied with its obligation to pay the first $13 million last year, but Vietnam did not reciprocate. Instead of accepting 2,500 former laborers by December, as agreed, it took back just 67.

Vietnam's reluctance to comply with the accord, together with the shocking level of brutality that Vietnamese gangs have used in their Berlin battles, have fed the anti-foreigner sentiment that bubbles below the surface throughout Germany.

German diplomats believe that the Vietnamese Government is in no hurry to allow the return of refugees whose numbers may include brutal gangsters. Some investigators suspect there is another reason for Hanoi's reluctance. They believe high-ranking Vietnamese Government officials or military officers may be behind the gangs operating here.

A spokesman for the Vietnamese Embassy in Bonn would say only that his Government was aware of the problem and that the repatriations were being delayed because investigations of individual cases were "extremely difficult."

In Hanoi today, the Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan accused German officials of making "unfriendly, insulting and unacceptable statements" about relations between the two countries. It called on the authorities here to "guarantee the security of the Vietnamese community living and working legally in Germany and to apprehend and prosecute the murderers as soon as possible."

The Vietnamese cigarette vendors, the police agree, are pawns in the current gang war. Many found themselves unemployed after Germany was unified in 1990, and cannot hold normal jobs because they are here illegally.

Among these, "there are people who know a great deal," said a police investigator who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They refuse to speak in public because legally they do not exist, or because the police are looking for them for some minor crime or other."

Vietnamese gang leaders, most of whom are said to operate from Czech or Polish villages near Germany's borders, supply the vendors with cigarettes and keep most of the profits. The police believe that most of the killings they order result from clashes among gangs over control of lucrative sales spots. Some victims may be vendors who have sought to operate independently.

Vendors who seek to slip out of Berlin are often stopped by thugs assigned to watch train and subway stations. Those who manage to escape after defying the gangs in one way or another may find that relatives in Vietnam have been killed in revenge.

This intimidation has made it all but impossible for the police to persuade witnesses to come forward. At a murder trial in the eastern city of Gera this year, a Vietnamese witness told the judge, "If I say anything here, I'm a dead man."

"In the Gera trial," a local newspaper reported, "it was the witnesses rather than the defendants who were scared."

Photo: Half a dozen Vietnamese gangs, each with 150 or so members,operate in Berlin, with cigarette smuggling the core of their business. Policemen recently arrested a Vietnamese street vendor in the Marzahn district. (Deutsche Presse-Agentur)